Gooch’s Café

In the chronology

1. about 1903 Gooch's Café opens in Chapel Hill with seven seats Gooch's Café began feeding university students in Chapel Hill about 1903, with seven seats by its own later account. It stayed a student gathering place for more than fifty years.
2. summer 1920 Fire destroys Gooch's Café and a row of frame stores in Chapel Hill An early-morning fire, thought to have started in Gooch's Café, burned five frame buildings in the business district, among them Pendergraft's grocery, Peace's barber shop and Foister's book store. Summer school students carried out the bookstore's stock, and the loss was put at $35,000.
3. 1949 The Carl Smith Building is completed on North Columbia Street Carl Smith's commercial building on North Columbia Street was completed in 1949; Gooch's Cafe moved in, and the area office of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis took rooms on the second floor.
4. December 20, 1956 Gooch's Café serves its last meal and becomes Green's Cafe Gooch's Café, a Chapel Hill fixture for more than half a century and owned since the 1940s by Clarence Simmons, served its last meal under that name. The next morning Charles T. Green of Durham took it over as Green's Cafe.

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